What is happening today in the villages south of Bethlehem, especially on the lands of Marah Ma’ala, is not something small or temporary.
I’m writing this as someone who is watching it unfold — step by step — as land we know slowly becomes off-limits to the people who belong to it.
The southern Bethlehem area is made up of a group of closely connected villages, including Marah Ma’ala, Jorat Al-Sham’a, Beit Fajjar, Um Salmuna, Wadi Rahhal, and Al-Ma’sara, along with smaller communities around them.
These villages are deeply connected — geographically and socially — and depend largely on agriculture, especially olive and grape farming, as a way of life and resilience.
In the past days, settlers, under direct protection of the Israeli army, placed several caravans on land belonging to local families.
These are not just temporary structures.
This is how it always begins — a caravan today, a settlement tomorrow.
This new outpost is already changing daily life.
It means losing large areas of agricultural land, farmers being cut off from their fields, tighter movement restrictions, and even the closure of village entrances.
Slowly, the area is being isolated.
But this didn’t start now.
Months ago, farmers were forced to uproot their own olive and grape trees from lands located along the main road, directly facing the area where the outpost is now being built.
They were given orders under the pretext of “security.”
Trees that stood for decades were gone within days.
On the other side of southern Bethlehem, in the Abu Njeim area, settlers have also set up a tent — another small step that signals more control over the land, and less access for Palestinian communities.
I’ve seen this before.
In Khallet Al-Nahla, on lands belonging to Wadi Rahhal, it started the same way — a tent, then caravans, and today it is a full settlement.
Settlers live there now, and from there, attacks against local residents and farmers continue.
What we are living today is a harsh reality.
People cannot approach, cannot protest — not because they don’t want to, but because getting too close can cost you your life.
Any attempt to resist can be met with live fire.
I’m not writing this just as news.
This is a testimony.
What is happening in southern Bethlehem is not random.
It is a slow, steady process of taking over the land — one step at a time.
A caravan here, a tent there… and each time, something is lost.
Urgent Call
This is a call to consulates, human rights organizations, the European Union, and all concerned actors:
what is happening on the ground requires immediate and serious action to stop this ongoing settlement expansion.
Silence is no longer enough.
Watching is no longer enough.
Because what is being lost here is not just land —
it is people, access, and the future.
Sumud Platform 